Stop Cash Shrink

For startups developing regulation technology for financial institutions that do business with marijuana firms, there’s one clear upside to the fact that medical marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

“We don’t have the traditional pressures from the large scale tech players because they don’t come in and play,” said Adam Crabtree, founder and CEO of NCS Analytics, a platform that tracks high-risk industries for government customers. “We all got to come into this space, grow and adapt without the big traditional tech monsters. … IBM’s Watson isn’t hopping into the cannabis industry anytime soon.”

Free to bloom without fear of being overshadowed by larger competitors for the time being, several firms have sprouted, touting tools to help financial institutions bank legal marijuana-related businesses, an industry expected to yield $10 billion in retail sales, according to the 2018 Marijuana Business Factbook.